Within the Charvaka or Lokayata perspective, consciousness is treated as entirely material, arising from the living body rather than from any independent soul or spiritual principle. What is ordinarily called the “self” is, on this view, simply the conscious, organized body, not an eternal ātman distinct from it. Mental states and awareness are thus not regarded as metaphysical entities, but as functions of the body in a particular state of organization. Consciousness is directly experienced, yet it is not taken as evidence for anything beyond the physical organism that manifests it.

Charvaka thinkers explain this in terms of the classical four elements—earth, water, fire, and air—whose specific combination gives rise to sentient life. Just as intoxicating power emerges from fermenting ingredients that are themselves non-intoxicating, so consciousness emerges from the right arrangement of purely physical elements. No fifth, subtle element or special “mind-stuff” is required; the mind is simply a name for the functioning of the body composed of these elements. Thoughts, feelings, and awareness are therefore understood as dependent on the body’s material configuration.

From this standpoint, consciousness has no existence apart from the body and does not survive its dissolution. When the body dies and its elemental constituents disperse, the conditions that supported consciousness vanish, and with them the mind itself. There is no continuation in the form of transmigration, rebirth, or a subtle mental vehicle traveling beyond death. The Charvaka view thus stands as a rigorously materialist account of mind: consciousness is bodily, contingent, and transient, arising from matter and ending when that material basis is lost.